The Chinese View Of Katherine Mansfield

For almost eighty years, Katherine Mansfield has been
popular with Chinese readers, and she has had a significant
influence on a number of Chinese short-story writers. It is
unusual for a Western writer to have such an enduring
impact. However little has been known of this in the West
until now, with the publication of A Fine Pen: The Chinese
View of Katherine Mansfield, by Shifen Gong.

Dr Gong, who
has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of
Auckland, has selected and introduced twenty critical texts,
and translated them into English for the first time.
Together they bring fresh insights to the largely
Eurocentric criticism of Mansfield's work, and at the same
time provide a commentary on Chinese literary
history.

Many of the texts, which were written between
1923-1991, are by translators. The earliest piece is by a
young student, Xu Zhimo, who wrote reverently of his meeting
with Mansfield in London as 'twenty immortal minutes'.

The
story of the rises and falls in Mansfield's popularity is
fascinating, as it shifts with the major social, political
and literary trends which have given rise to modern China
and its literature. Two distinct periods emerge: the 1920s
and '30s, before the war and Japanese occupation, and the
1980s and early '90s, when the grip of the cultural
revolution had relaxed.

Mansfield's portayal of social
classes and the injustices of bourgeois society had obvious
appeal to the Chinese. One of the translators, Tang Baoxin,
writes: 'With remorseless irony she lays bare the hypocrisy
and shallowness of the leisured class and their men of
lettersŠ'

A Fine Pen also includes notes on the texts and
a bibliography of Chinese translations and criticism of
Mansfield's work from 1923-1991. The book provides many
insights into the reception of Western literature by Chinese
readers as well as being a significant contribution to
Mansfield studies.

About the Author/Translator
Dr Shifen Gong taught university English in China before
arriving in New Zealand in the mid-1980s. She studied
comparative literature at the University of Auckland,
receiving her Ph.D. in 1994. With a sound knowledge of
Chinese and English-speaking societies and cultures, and
with many years of experience in teaching, researching and
writing in both languages, she has published books, essays
and translations in China, New Zealand, US, Britain, Hong
Kong, and Taiwan. Dr Gong currently resides in Kentucky,
USA, teaching Chinese at the University of Louisville and
Bellarmine University. Contact the editor: Shifen Gong,
sgrmfox@bellsouth.net Tel 001 502 778 1239 (USA)

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